Fool's Gold
by The Sky Pirate Girl
Summary: He was a king of a castle made of pyrite and it was his cage.


**Fool's Gold**

_i. prelude_

Once upon a time, when she was still a child - when the world still held some magic and before she was drawn into becoming bitter and hard-hearted - she had dreamed wonderful dreams.

After Ellie and Elizabeth and all the other girls had fallen asleep, she would raise on tiptoes and glide away to the window still and open.

_ii. savior_

The first time, he had abducted her and she gave him a kick in the chin that probably really hurt. He tried to intimidate her, but really didn't succeed.

She asked him why he took her away, but he just looked curiously at her, drinking her in.

"So you're the Savior."

"I'm what?"

"Gotta say this was not what I expected," he said and circled around her, observing her. "So scrawny and little."

"Well, come after a few years then," she snapped, feeling challenged. "You won't be disappointed."

And he flied her back to her window still and bid her goodbye and smiled a wolfish smile that seemed too fitting and in the same - not.

_iii. famous_

The second time he abducted her - and she really hadn't grown too much but she supposed that in the dream world it was more than enough - she had already figured out who he was.

"You're Peter Pan, aren't you?" she said.

He brightened up. "How did you know?"

"You're quite famous in our world - the boy who never grows up."

"Oh?"

"And where is your Wendy?"

A frown. "Wendy? I've never known a Wendy," he said. "Not that I remember."

Somehow, he seemed as if he was patiently listening to her, curious. He was so much older than her after all. But she'd tell him.

"Wendy is the one who tells stories to you and the Lost Boys, so that they won't feel so lonely anymore. She is their Mother, and you are their Father."

"Never heard of a Wendy," he said promptly.

_iv. scheherazade_

The third time he came, it wasn't quite an abduction - he knocked on the window at night, she slipped away from her bed and opened.

It was a beautiful, warm summer night and she asked him to take her to Neverland, because she was just as lost as the Lost Boys. When he refused, she angrily accused him (in a whisper, so as to not awake the other girls) that he was a sexist - a complex word she had just learned. She was very proud to know it.

"Neverland is not all it's cracked up to be in your fairy-tales, Savior," he said, and his voice struck her as bitter.

She finally realized what he reminded her of - a predator from the jungle, wounded and caged. Vicious because of his lack of freedom.

"But you can fly!" she protested.

"But I can never grow old."

"_Why_ would you want to grow old?"

"Because I _am_."

She tried to see things his way, she really did, but at the moment she couldn't understand him.

Instead, she weaved stories, the way the Miller's daughter would spin her gold.

Over his rather infrequent visits, she would tell her stories, hoping that they would interest him and he would stay just a minute longer.

_v. promise_

He came, even when she moved away, from one foster to another.

She would plead him to take her to Neverland, and he'd promise with a lazy smile that one day, when she was old enough, he would take her away.

She never believed him.

The more bitter and hurt she became, the more she understood him - understood that caged-and-wounded animal instinct he had, and she promised him, promised- that they would be free one day.

He is a king of a castle made of pyrite and it was his cage.

He'd take her to see the stars, and they'd pretend for a moment but it wasn't enough. They were wild and alive, but all was only a dream. Soon she'd have to grow up.

_vi. destiny_

"You are attached to me!" he realized one night, although he probably had always known. She wanted to hit him. "You love me," he said softly and looked at her with something akin to a new appreciation. "Although I can't have the Savior love me, can I?" he murmured to himself.

"If I am the savior you always talk about," she asked, finally deciding to caress his face instead of slapping him. "Why can't I save you?"

"That's not how destiny works."

_vii. stars, fade_

She didn't see him again and she slowly started to forget him.

It was all a dream, all a dream - an imaginary friend who broke her heart.

She wouldn't believe in anything anymore and maybe she forgot it all - but her heart never forgot the bitterness that remained.

_viii. the end, part one_

She saw him only once, before her childhood ended.

Neal- the guy she fancied - had gone away for the night, on something stupid and dangerous, she supposed. They were staying in a two-storey house with a garden whose owners were away on a holiday (they didn't know about the two new free-lodgers, but the girl thought they should be thankful that someone was taking care of all the food before it got bad).

She heard a crash in the garden and, warily, she went out to see what it was about.

It was a boy around her age, somewhat familiar and obviously wounded.

As soon as he saw her, a few meters away from him, the boy smiled. It was an unfamiliar sort of a smile and she couldn't put her finger on the emotions it portrayed.

"Figures," he breathed as he slowly stood up. "Figures I'd come to the past, to you, before it all ends." He neared her and she took a step away. "Come now, don't be afraid of me. You were always the brave one."

A name on the tip of her tongue - but no, it had been a dream, a nightmare, a fantasy.

He was so close to her, and both were breathing through their mouths, and she couldn't move away (not when something was breaking inside her, something was screaming and she didn't know what - but it was her own heart, as his was stopping).

She tasted his tongue before she tasted his lips.

_Ah._

She closed her eyes - almost remembered this boy- but when she opened them again she was lying in her bed and tears were falling from the corner of her eyes and onto the pillows and Neal was sleeping beside her but he would never understand (although if she had told him, he would have understood better than anyone).

There was golden dust on her lips.

_ix. new but old_

She feels inexplicably lonely in Neverland. She never thinks to ask herself why.

_Is no one else hearing the children's cries?_

_x. after_

When he first waltzes in, she doesn't battle an eyelash and doesn't remember him (she's so much older and younger than him).

Almost as an afterthought, as he hasn't expected that she doesn't know him, he introduces himself.

"I'm Peter. Peter Pan."

When she presses Neal's blade at his neck and asks him where her son is, he breathes a smile into her face and tells her that she has fire, and that he is _not_ disappointed.

_xi. the end, part two_

_Sooner or later, you'll have to grow up, Peter Pan._

And near the end, he has the chance to blow them all into nothingness but she knows him again, she has remembered, and bravely (she is always brave) she nears him until he is barely within an arm's length.

"You won't do it." He turns to look at her with half a smile, and words cannot describe the way he doesn't seem to care about the world although she supposes it is fair since the world never seemed to care about him either (but he cares about her, she is the only thing that matters to him and she knows it).

"And why is that?" he asks.

"Because you love me," - and she's doing her manipulate-the-batshit-crazy-guy again, and battling wide eyes - "And you will _not_ destroy the thing you love. You _won't_ do it again."

He looks at her son then- and she doesn't know what he thinks although she can guess; perhaps, had he been free from his curse, the world would have been a different place. "You're right," he says finally and smiles his don't-care-I'm-indestructible smile, and he's wounded and dying and then after one final look at her, he flies away and she remembers to _when_.

It hurts, but it has always hurt when it comes to him.

* * *

**A/N**: Don't know what the hell did I just write, but it was a mix between _ouat_ and poirrot's _taken at the flood'_send since I watched both of them this morning.


End file.
